N. Ching – The Fundamentals of Acupuncture (2017)

2.330 

Автор: N. Ching
Название книги: The Fundamentals of Acupuncture (2017)
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Медицина
Страницы: 754
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

This accessible textbook clearly explains the basic foundations and principles of acupuncture and Chinese Medicine. With over 70 illustrations, it covers the theories of yin and yang, the five phases, the physiology of the body, the internal organs, the channel system, acupuncture point categories, the point functions and indications, needling techniques and aetiological factors. Authoritative, yet readable, this is a vital addition to the shelves of all students of Chinese medicine.

As an educator in acupuncture and Chinese medicine it is tempting to enjoy the
reflected glory of past students’ achievements. Seeking to resist such empty vanity
I instead applaud their accomplishments in the belief that credit properly belongs
to those who do the work rather than their teachers. Nevertheless, some pleasure
remains in having the opportunity to proudly introduce this textbook and its author
Nigel ‘Tonto’ Ching to the English-speaking acupuncture and Chinese medicine
community.
I came to know Nigel in 2000 when he began the three-year training in Chinese
herbal medicine on which I was a lead tutor. It quickly became clear that he wished
to get his money’s worth from this course, as evidenced by the fact that all the
assignments I marked of his were close to flawless. Later I came to discover a person
who was determined, not only to immerse himself deeply into the wisdom that
acupuncture and Chinese medicine offers, but to interpret and share that wisdom
with others. Nigel has published three major textbooks in Danish, texts that have
become established as standard student resources. His skills as a communicator
and dedication to his profession have helped him become a prominent educator in
Nordic countries and more widely across the European Union.
What is presented so succinctly in this text is the current standard model of
acupuncture practice, an understanding that is shared by perhaps a million
practitioners worldwide. This is a lucid account of the current interpretation of
the extraordinarily diverse scholarly medical tradition of China, a medical system
whose literature base extends back almost 2500 years and whose historical literature
base runs to many of thousands of volumes. This text provides the foundation that
informs modern practice. It provides coherence to a complex historical tradition
and sets out the dominant interpretation that is the basis of most acupuncture
practice and research worldwide. Before this interpretation was made available
to practitioners and students in the West, our learning resources were a confusing
mix of fact, fantasy and misapprehension – a mish-mash of Chinese whispers.
In the past, limited scholarship combined with the tendency to romantic
orientalism meant that acupuncture study was a frustrating process for those who
sought to practice this medicine in a plain, effective and authentic manner. With
insufficient information and understanding we coloured this medicine with our own
fantasies about what we would expect this medicine to be about, an instance of
the human tendency to see things that are other in terms of things that are already
familiar to us (a trait that was summed up in just six words by the playwright and
intellectual Eugene Ionescu as ‘the French for London is Paris!’). Fortunately, less
than four decades ago, China’s new standard model for this medicine was delivered
to us by scholar-pioneers such as Dan Bensky, John O’Connor, Ted Kaptchuk,
Giovanni Macciocia and others. These were exceptional people who had taken the trouble to learn the Chinese language and who had devoted long periods to study
extensively in China at a time when travel and life there was difficult. What they
brought was a breath of fresh qi for those of us who had previously wallowed in
the obscure hinterlands between Chinese philosophy, metaphysics and medicine. The
more pragmatic style they brought was appealing because it was congruent with the
understanding that we had already learned from exposure to ancient classics such as
the Yijing (Classic of Change) and Huangdi Nejing (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic),
but the teachings included fewer confusing distractions. The subject was now laid
out for us in a coherent, understandable and down-to-earth way. Halleluja! This is
the interpretation of China’s acupuncture tradition that Nigel offers you here.
In the decades since the introduction of this style of acupuncture practice
our profession has continued to mature significantly – we benefit from improved
translation resources and ever-greater levels of scholarship. During the same period
the bamboo curtain almost completely lifted and we gained more direct access to
China’s classical medical corpus as well as to the generosity of many high-level
scholar-practitioners from China. Alongside this, we also gained clearer perspectives
on the manner in which this venerable medical tradition was re-interpreted
and re‑packaged to meet the needs of China’s health service in the communist
era and to match the political imperatives that dominated the 1960s and 70s. We
came to appreciate, too, that ownership of this medicine is not entirely Chinese, that
diverse interpretations and styles of practice had emerged over long periods in other
East Asian countries, notably Japan, Korea and Vietnam. These countries added
their own layers of scholarly interpretation for well over one thousand years and that
the styles they have evolved also deserve our attention and respect.
In the 1950s, having made the political decision to include traditional medicine
in their healthcare provision, Chinese authorities surveyed the mind-boggling
diversity of medically related beliefs and practices that had been acquired over the two
previous millennia; essentially an unwieldy mix of sense, half-sense and nonsense,
superstition and rationality. Much of what the various medical traditions contained
was unworkable in the modern world and so decisions had to be made about what
would be included in the medical curriculum and what would be excluded. They
will have known, for instance, that the Imperial Medical College of the Song dynasty
(960–1278) included extensive study of chanting as a therapeutic modality. It is
possible that chanting delivered some useful therapeutic value to people at that time
but it did not appear well-matched to the clinical needs in the forward-looking
communist world of the 1960s.
Medical practices connect intimately with the cultural beliefs and norms of their
time and many of those from old China were no longer congruent with those of
today. Belief in the influence of ancestor spirits, astrological notions and the ancient
medical practice of writing therapeutic Chinese characters on paper and asking
patients to burn this and then swallow the ash were part of the healthcare tradition.
The authorities chose to exclude such ideas from the modern scope of practice and
so, with this in mind, panels of doctors in the 1950s and 60s were tasked with surveying the formal written tradition. The intention was to reassemble the tradition
into a compact practical medicine that was teachable, examinable and a practical
means for providing healthcare to millions. As neophytes navigating through the
maze of half-understood classical ideas, it was this coherent modern style that my
student generation welcomed near the beginning of our journey into this medicine.
Later, as we ourselves gained direct access to the historical literature, we began
to understand the way that this sanitisation process had operated and we came
to appreciate that this style was only a rough approximation of the tradition. We
noticed that thinkers in China had grafted ideas that more properly belonged to the
herbal medicine practice onto acupuncture theory, such as the idea of formalised
acupoint actions (e.g. Tai xi – Kidney 3 – Nourishes Kidney Yin). Whilst not, of itself,
an unhelpful innovation, we realised that this was not quite the way things were
presented historically. We discovered, too, that some interesting branches of the
acupuncture tree had been unceremoniously lopped off in the quest for rationality.
The spiritual and emotional content of the tradition had been downplayed
and simplified. Now we can see that this was understandable because, after all,
communism by definition provides a guarantee of happiness for all. Why would
there be any need to include discussions of depression? Further, wishing to see a
closer match with modern biomedicine meant that some basic traditional aspects of
theory had to be downplayed – chronobiology (the biology of time) and the wu xing
(five element) model of change, for example.
Having discovered that a wholesale re-styling had taken place, some in the
West seized upon this to suggest that modern Traditional Chinese Medicine was
not so much a re-interpretation but an invention of the communists. That it was a
misleading mutation of the historical medical tradition. It was claimed, for example,
that the Ba Gang diagnostic framework (八 纲 Eight Principles; Internal-External,
Hot-Cold, Excess-Vacuity, Yin-Yang) had been invented in 1947 by a Dr Zhu
Wei‑ju.
Nigel Ching, myself and many others take the view that the critics overstate
the position. The Ba Gang ideas are quite clearly present in the historical medical
literature of China, what Dr Zhu did was apply a new label to this fundamental idea,
not introduce a new idea. The same applies to the core content in China’s standard
model – that it is practical and substantially accurate. The issue for our profession to
consider in the coming years has more to do with what has been excluded than what
has been misrepresented. Many consider that the clarity provided by the appraisal of
the tradition in the Communist era has, on balance, been a positive thing.
Today, practitioners, translators and scholars in this global profession are better
placed to broaden our understanding of the tradition, to evaluate more closely the
meaning of the Han dynasty medical classics and to factor in the innovations of
medical scholarship from later times. We are better placed now to decide for ourselves
what parts of this medicine we believe to be irrational, ineffective, unsuitable or
misconstrued and adopt those that make sense to us and that we consider have value
for our patients. Having tracked Nigel Ching’s progress towards mastery in acupuncture and
Chinese medicine I know that he is familiar with the deeper refinements that lie
beyond the scope of this textbook. He knows the territory that lies beyond the
TCM standard model. Despite this, we both support the notion that the current
interpretation of Chinese medicine which dominates in practice today is the most
convenient point of entry. It offers a coherent, consensual and substantially accurate
overview of the root tradition. It is the starting point to practising this medicine
effectively and is one that gives us perspectives that help us interpret other material.
What Nigel Ching offers here, in a concise and accurate style, is the interpretation
that is understood by perhaps a million practitioners worldwide and it unites this
profession together in an agreed common understanding.
Read and study this book well and you will have the opportunity to gain the
reliable standard model road map that will help you navigate from patient
presentation, through interpretation and diagnosis to effective intervention. Later
you can journey beyond these roads to find a wonderfully diverse and extensive
further landscape of rivers, footpaths and mountains that define a still deeper soul
to this medicine.
I have yet to meet anyone who regretted stepping onto this path.

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